


The Page of Cups

by ZoeBug



Series: A Length of Twine (Prompt Jar Drabbles) [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blue thinks about herself and Gansey in relation to The Page of Cups card, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Introspection, Light Angst, Nino's Pizza, Relationship Study, Ronan makes a gratuitous Mom!Gansey joke, Sort of? - Freeform, Tarot, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, does this count as fluff ???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8140249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug
Summary: Blue doesn’t think she’s very much like The Page of Cups at all. The Page of Cups is the card of optimism and naivete, of potential and youthful idealism.Sensible, people always call her. Blue Sargent is a sensible young woman. Everyone says so. And The Page of Cups has very little to do with being sensible.Honestly, Blue thinks, if anyone is The Page of Cups, it would be Gansey, not her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This came from my attempts to beat a nasty case of writer's block I've had all week. I finally just said eff it and decided whatever card I drew from my tarot deck I'd write drabble based around and I just happened to get one of the cards most visible/involved in the books.
> 
> I recently got the tarot deck Maggie created that's associated with TRC and I've been _adoring_ it, which is why I described the cards with art like hers. I just really love tarot and it's ability to bring the multiple sides and aspects of people and things in peoples' lives to light to examine.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

**PROMPT** : The Page of Cups - a card representing optimism, naivete, potential, and youthful idealism.

 

* * *

 

It’s a Saturday afternoon when Maura calls Blue into the Reading Room to help with a reading for a customer. Blue’s shift at Nino’s won’t start for another forty-five minutes so she figures she doesn’t have time as an excuse so she might as well help out.

Blue trudges dutifully into the room, her heavy boots thudding against the wood beneath the carpet. Maura’s mouth morphs down into a wry, yet amused twist at the sight of Blue’s exasperated sigh and noisy, shuffling entrance.

She’s sitting opposite her client, a bespectacled middle-aged woman whose natural brunette color is clearly visible at the roots of her blonde hair. She blinks curiously from behind her glasses as Blue enters. On the table between the two, Maura has laid out a spread of tarot cards and has her fingertips lightly resting atop the face of the nearest card.

“Ah, there you are. Denise, this is my daughter, Blue,” Maura introduces, waving Blue over beside her.

“Hello, Blue,” Denise says and nods her head in greeting. As Blue crosses to stand beside her mother, Denise actually appraises her carefully shredded blouse and spiky hair with a fond smile rather than distaste (which is rare for anyone over thirty-five in Blue's experience.) Laughter lines crease beside Denise’s eyes when she smiles and Blue decides the woman might not be so bad.

“Are you psychic too, Blue?” Denise asks, her face intent and curious. Swallowing against any words that rise to her lips, Blue immediately decides Denise can go step on a Lego and that any flattering things Blue had thought only a moment ago had been mere flukes. Blue clenches her jaw against the urge to purse her lips in distaste and annoyance.

“In a way,” Maura answers tactfully as Blue lays her hand sulkily on her mother’s shoulder without responding. “Blue’s gift is very unique, you see. She amplifies psychic ability.”

“Ohh,” Denise breathes, clearly impressed and intrigued. “How _wonderful_.” Her eyes widen in such a comical way that Blue has to cough into her shoulder to hide the small laugh catching in her throat.

With Blue's help Maura reads the woman’s cards thoroughly and accurately.

Blue knows that some customers decide not to return to 300 Fox Way, finding Maura’s readings dry and lacking the “mystical” and “mysterious” quality many other psychics tend to imbue their readings with. However, Denise is apparently not one of those people as she only grows more visibly pleased with Maura’s interpretation as it continues sans any extended pauses or dramatic eye contact.

Denise is beaming by the time they're finished and she’s paying for the reading, thanking both Maura and Blue profusely for the “astoundingly accurate” reading and advice. They’d told her she should go ahead and adopt that dog she’d become attached to while volunteering at a nearby animal shelter.

Blue thinks to herself that she doesn't need to be psychic to give that kind of advice. Friend of dogs everywhere, Blue Sargent is strongly in favor of anything pet-related. (She also reconsiders Denise as she opens the front door to leave, admitting that anyone that happy over a dog might not be so bad after all.)

After Denise's departure, Maura returns to the Reading Room to tidy up for the next reading in half an hour. Blue stands in the doorway as Maura reaches for Denise’s cards which remain laid out across the table. Maura’s hand stills just before sweeping the cards back into a pile, hovering atop one card on the far side of the table that Blue cannot see.

Maura smiles softly down at the spread before gently plucking the card from the table top. She turns, flipping the face of the card towards Blue.

“Your card,” Maura announces, holding The Page of Cups out for Blue to see. “So much potential.” She winks and Blue rolls her eyes in the customary teenage blend of embarrassment and affection. Maura just laughs before turning back to the table to finish gathering the cards.

It’s always been the same, ever since Blue was a child. The Page of Cups. Maura smiling at her.  _“Look at all the potential she has inside her...”_

Blue crosses her arms and leans against the doorway of the Reading Room and watches her mother. Sometimes Blue thinks that being a psychic focuses her mother’s attention on the mystical and spiritual so sharply that she fails to notice and acknowledge some of the more human aspects of her life. And of Blue’s.

“Are you going to see your boys tonight?” Maura asks, her back still to Blue.

“Think so,” Blue replies. “After my shift at Nino’s, though, so I’ll be out kind of late. But they’re picking me up so don’t worry about a ride.”

“Hmm.” Maura’s considering noise makes Blue roll her eyes extravagantly. Because at this point, Blue knows all the oft-repeated words contained in that sound.

 _Be careful with those boys_ , it says. _Don’t kiss anyone_ , it says. _Remember he’s going to die one way or another_ , it says. Blue knows. She _knows_. She knows these things so deeply and thoroughly that they ache in the core of her. She knows them so well that they are often times impossible _not_ to feel. Blue wonders how anyone could ever think she was capable of forgetting them when they pulse painfully in time with her heartbeat each time Gansey smiles.

“Well,” Maura continues as she lights a new stick of incense on a side table, “pass along a message to Coca-Cola shirt from Persephone, would you? Four of Swords, she said.”

Blue lets a breath out through her nose. Her mother is definitely a woman who errs on the side of the mystical and the unseen.

“Yeah, yeah,” she replies, pushing off the door frame. “Tell Adam 'Four of Swords.’ Got it. I’m gonna go get ready for work, okay?”

“Alright, honey. Be safe.”

Blue Sargent figures that she is very much like her mother in some ways and very much unlike her mother in others.

A little later, Blue is knocking back the kickstand of her bike and tossing one leg over the seat. Kicking off, she begins the silent, contemplative ride to Nino's and can't help considering her mother and The Page of Cups and how she’s supposed fit between the two.

By the time she’s clicking her bike lock shut at the rusty old rack outside the pizza shop, Blue has decided she both agrees and disagrees with her mother on the matter.

She can just _imagine_ the women of 300 Fox Way reacting to her declaration of this fact.

Calla would say that it’s just like Blue to think that, contrary young woman that she is.

Persephone would look somewhere off to her side, her gaze titled upwards and sigh something about contradictions and duality and how human complexities are full of mysteries.

Jimi would give Blue a slightly condescending look without it meaning to be so and say something about cards having lots of meanings so Blue and her mother could _both_ be right about it.

Orla would consider her nails and proclaim that this wasn't any of _her_ business so why should she care about it, and anyway Blue was going to do what she was going to do so what good would her perspective lend.

Maura, Blue thinks, would press her lips together into a familiar line. Her eyebrows would draw down into a contemplative furrow and she would tilt her head to the side, would consider Blue. She would extract one hand from her crossed arms and gesture at Blue, reminding Blue how she was born with the ability to draw out others' potential. She would look confused as to how could Blue could possibly disagree with that.

That’s the thing, though. Blue _doesn’t_ disagree with that. Blue knows that she brings something unique and powerful to any psychic or magic she encounters: she brings potential. She brings with her the opportunity for _something more_.

But that isn’t the part Blue disagrees with her mother on.

Her shift at Nino’s starts off boring and greasy and continues in the same fashion as hours drag by with no sign of the boys dropping in to see her. So instead she seats customers and takes orders and ignores the odd asshole Aglionby boy to the best of her ability and thinks some more about The Page of Cups.

Her mother’s world is that of the spiritual, of the psychic, of the mystical. That's how she interprets, how she relates. Of course she would see Blue in the card associated with optimism and potential.

But the thing about assigning Blue The Page of Cups that her mother doesn’t seem to understand is that Blue is not her ability. Magic surrounds Blue Sargent, she knows this. She chases it and is chased by it, watches it weave glorious and awe-inspiring threads into and around everyone in her life.

But down here, on the ground where Blue Sargent lives her life hour by hour, minute by minute, she feels agonizingly and breathtakingly human.

Blue is more than this something that is only _something_ when put in relation to other people. (In fact, she’s slightly offended by the very idea of only being _something_ in relation to other people.)

Taking her amplifying abilities out of the equation, Blue doesn’t think she’s very much like The Page of Cups at all. The Page of Cups is the card of optimism and naïveté, of potential and youthful idealism.

By and large, Blue isn’t naive. She might be prone to occasional optimism, but not, she thinks, naively so. If she had to say, Blue figures that as a person she has just about as much potential as anyone else. And she may be idealistic, sure, but not in a childish or flighty way.

 _Sensible_ , people always call her. Blue Sargent is a _sensible_ young woman. Everyone says so. And The Page of Cups has very little to do with being sensible.

Blue is filling a plastic pitcher with Nino’s world famous (read: completely regular) sweet tea when the jingling of the door announces the arrival of new customers.

“I’ll be with you in a moment!” Blue hollers from the back, plopping a slice of lemon in amidst the ice cubes. She hefts the pitcher of tea and follows the indistinct babble of voices beyond the kitchen doors.

She prays to anyone who's listening that it’s not a large group; she’s not sure she could handle an entire gaggle of Aglionby boys tonight.

She pushes through the kitchen doors back out into the dining area with her fake Customer-Service™ smile plastered across her face, only to find her exact imagined horror gathered around the counter.

“Jane!” When he sees her, Gansey’s face lights up in the most ridiculous way. Blue’s not sure anyone else has ever looked as delighted at setting eyes on her in the way Gansey does. He looks as impeccably put together, as always, effortlessly handsome and elegant in a way that infuriates her.

A little behind Gansey, shoulders hunched unconsciously inwards, Adam looks tired (always looks tired) but he offers her a half smile and extracts a hand from one of his pockets to flick a wave in her direction. Hovering behind both of them like a surly shadow, Ronan gives her a silent upward jerk of his chin in acknowledgment before returning to glaring at a booth to his left. Blue considers it to be the Ronan equivalent of an enthusiastic reunion hug and feels strangely triumphant.

“Decided to show up after all, huh?” Blue asks in the best impression of a mother aware of her child's wrong-doings and waiting to see if they'll fess up before passing judgement. She does it mostly just to see the way Gansey’s face falls spectacularly for a moment, everything in him splayed openly across his expression for her to see.

His eyebrows draw up and together. It makes him look simultaneously eleven and eighty years-old.

“You’re not truly upset, are you?” he asks, soft and unsure, careful and attentive.

She likes this version of Gansey. The version that doesn’t try to smooth his expressions over into diplomatic pleasantness. The version that chooses words carefully out of concern for his friends rather than a self-censoring need to please. The version that knows he doesn’t know everything but wants to learn, wants to prove himself worthy to those around him.

Blue laughs and sets the pitcher of sweet tea down on the counter as her bicep starts to ache from the weight.

“No, Gansey, I’m not upset.” Behind Gansey, Adam snorts. Gansey tosses a look over his shoulder which only makes Adam smile wider. Ronan flicks his gaze away from the booth to watch Adam laugh from the corner of his eye. Blue looks back to Gansey. “Is Noah here?”

To Blue's surprise, Ronan is the one who answers her.

“Nah. Think he got burnt out earlier. We were smashing stuff in the parking lot.”

Blue has to try very hard not smile.

“That sounds… productive.”

“In any case,” Gansey jumps in, “I apologize for being later than planned. We lost track of time. Or, truthfully, I should say time lost track of us.” Gansey chuckles a little at his own ridiculously lame joke. She sighs heavily at Gansey all the while something in her chest feels like a rapidly inflating balloon.

“You were in Cabeswater then.” She leans against the counter. The condensation on the outer surface of the pitcher has started to bead.

“These two were,” Adam says, jerking his thumb at Ronan and Gansey. “I just got off work.”

“Speaking of work,” Blue says, eyeing the sweet tea, “go sit down. I gotta bring this tea over to table six. I’ll come talk in a few.”

Gansey nods understandingly as the three turn to secure one of the corner booths for themselves. Blue hefts the pitcher of tea and strides toward the customers at table six.

Her shift continues on and she serves customers and takes orders. She leans on the boys’ table with her elbows when it’s slow. They talk a lot about the quest, but also about school and cars and other things.

Blue gives Persephone’s message to Adam and he makes a sound in his nose that is half-sigh, half-snort.

“I already got a mom, I don’t need more people frettin’ after me,” he grumbles, exhaustion allowing his accent to snag a ‘g’ from him.

“You mean Gansey?” Ronan snickers. Adam punches him in the shoulder. Ronan grins like the blade of a knife. Gansey pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and sighs.

The jingling of the opening door draws her away once again, saving her from informing Gansey just how disgustingly upper-class the gesture looks on him. (Or how terrifyingly endearing she finds it to be.)

Blue is making her way back toward the kitchen doors about fifteen minutes later when she glances back toward the booth in the corner. She sees Gansey gesticulating wildly as he speaks, his face alight with excitement.

Passing through the swinging doors into the back, she starts to once again think about her mother and The Page of Cups and what it’s supposed to mean.

Honestly, Blue thinks, if anyone is The Page of Cups, it would be Gansey, not her. _He_ is the naive one, the idealistic one. _He_ is the one who continues his search even when months go by without any progress. _He_ is the one who believes and believes and believes.

Gansey is the one whose dreams and hopes and ideas run away with him faster than the rest of the world can keep up.

Blue can just imagine what her mother would say to _that_. Maura would crook one eyebrow and look from Blue to Gansey or from Blue to the cards as if Blue were trying to explain to her that two plus two actually equals five. She would remind Blue of Gansey’s death and mysterious resurrection along the ley line, of his spirit’s appearance on St. Mark’s Eve, of his role in the cyclical nature of fate.

She'd tell Blue all the things that she already knows―knows like the presence of a dagger between her ribs, things she's freshly made aware of each time she moves and doesn’t need her mother reminding her to remember.

Because down here on the ground where Blue Sargent lives hour by hour, minute by minute, Gansey is not just his death nor his strange second chance nor his foretold fate. In the same way that Blue’s ability has affected who she is but is not all that she is, these things have affected who Gansey is but are not all that he is.

Down here on the ground living hour by hour, minute by minute, Gansey is much more The Page of Cups than she.

Because up in the domain of the magical and the psychic, The Page of Cups does fit Blue. Up there amidst the workings of fate and time, Blue breathes potential in every exhale.

But down here, down in the greasy kitchen of Nino’s where her feet hurt and she still has an hour left of her shift and out in the dining area her raven boys are gathered in a booth in the corner where Gansey’s face will soon light up once again with adoration and delight, things are shifted.

And maybe it makes sense that it should be this way, that everything should work in circles like this. Down here, _Gansey_ is the one with the ability to draw out the potential in life―in all of their lives―with his unshakable optimism and unswerving faith in every single one of them.

Perhaps, Blue considers, they are mirrors, the two of them. Simply of each other.

 

 

 

At the end of her shift, Blue jogs back into the kitchen to punch out for the evening. Grabbing her coat off the hanger against the back wall, she shrugs it on before hurrying back out through the dining area toward the boys waiting outside in the parking lot.

Blue can see them through the front windows, gathered around Gansey’s Camaro: Ronan―flashing Adam a razor sharp grin―and Adam―raising his chin in a refusal to back down from Ronan’s intimidation tactics―and Gansey―paging through the journal open in his hands, periodically glancing up through the windows of the pizza shop.

Blue wrenches open the front door and it jingles quietly as it closes behind her.

“Jane! So glad you’re finished for the evening.”

Gansey is smiling at her again, his face lighting up in that same elated and excited way. Blue shoves her hands into her coat pockets and drops her gaze to her shoes, unable to tolerate the adoration in Gansey’s eyes at the moment.

But then she halts mid-step when her hand slides along the broad surface of something smooth and thin in her pocket. Her eyebrows furrow in confusion as pulls out whatever strange object she'd found in her coat.

“Jane?” Gansey asks, concerned. Even as she's looking down to the thing in her hand, she can picture Gansey’s expression―the one so concerned and attentive and transparent.

Vulnerable.

Blue closes her eyes and thinks maybe that's the version of Gansey she finds herself beside on those dark Henrietta nights up on the mountains, the Gansey she finds herself wishing against fate, against _everything_ , that she could kiss.

Maybe Gansey is the one making her idealistic. The world is nothing but mirrors and circles.

She wonders whether Gansey's brand of idealism is enough to save him―save them all―from the future Blue had seen on St. Mark's Eve: Gansey ghostly and wandering, dead ( _just_ died) looking so lost and vulnerable in all the ways she is falling in love with so fiercely.

_"That's all there is."_

Blue lets out a deep breath and opens her eyes.

Between her thumb and forefinger, she finds she is holding a card. A tarot card, more specifically. One from her mother’s deck. Blue can tell because the pattern on the backside she's looking at is so familiar and comforting. It feels like 300 Fox Way and her mother and home between her fingertips.

She flips the card over, trying to ignore the way her fingers are lightly trembling, to see the face.

“Is everything alright?”

Two deer gaze up at her from the card, one black and one white. Their antlers cross over one another's, their necks both arched back order to press their heads softly together.

The Lovers.

Duality. Balance. Harmony.

Two aspects of a larger mechanism working together in sync.

Two types of mirrors reflecting off each other in different ways.

“Yeah,” Blue croaks, wincing at the way her voice breaks the smallest bit. God, are her eyes burning around the edges too? Dammit, this is ridiculous. She’s supposed to be the _sensible_ one here.

Sensible people aren’t supposed to cry over a stupid tarot card.

Sensible people also aren’t supposed to fall in love with infuriating and oblivious Aglionby boys, Blue thinks. Boys who are going to die less than a year from now and who show with each passing day how little they deserve that fate. Boys who are clumsy and ignorant in their wording and patronizing when they mean to complement but who are also trying so very hard to be better. Boys who care so incredibly much, who believe in the magic and majesty of the world more intensely than anyone met before, who love so wholly and so deeply that they would go to the ends of the earth and back for someone they care for.

No, sensible people aren’t supposed to fall in love with boys like that.

And Blue Sargent is a sensible young woman. Everyone says so.

But also, occasionally, when night has settled like a hush over Henrietta and the distant shadows of the mountains tower like the ancient giants of myth and a boy of the sort sensible people aren’t supposed to fall in love with smiles at Blue like she is the magic in the world that he has been searching for… maybe then, she could also be The Page of Cups, after all.

Because Gansey is holding out his hand to her―to help her over the concrete curb and it's stupid and unnecessary and she has a whole rant on the tip of her tongue about the misogynistic roots of chivalry like that―and yet the image of him standing there has something blooming in the center of her chest.

Because Henrietta at night has Blue feeling like the world is full of magic and wonders, none so much as Gansey standing before her, for this night at the very least, still living and breathing and so lovely and smiling at her like _that_.

Because in this moment Blue feels it might be possible that there is nothing inside her _but_ potential as she reaches out to take Gansey’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> (Little easter egg in there: The message that Persephone/Maura sent along with Blue to tell Adam was "Four of Swords" which is the card associated with exhaustion, overworking, and the suggestion of healing rest. Persephone basically was telling him―in her typical mysterious fashion―to take a goddamn break.)
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Thanks for reading C:  
>   
> [fanfic/podfic blog](http://zoe-bug.tumblr.com/) | [personal](http://xiexiecaptain.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/xiexiecaptain)


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